From Metrology to Digital Dentistry: Back to SHINING 3D HQ in Hangzhou
Straight off the back of DenTech China 2026 in Shanghai, I’ll be heading to Shanghai Hongqiao station, jumping on the high-speed train and making my way to Hangzhoudong (Hangzhou East Railway Station.)
For me, this is one of the best parts of the trip.
Trade shows are great for seeing what a company is ready to show the world. Visiting the headquarters is where you get to see what they are working on next.
I’ll be heading back to SHINING 3D headquarters in Hangzhou to catch up with some amazing friends, spend time with the dental team, see what R&D has been working on and hopefully contribute a few ideas of my own.
One of My Favourite Teams to Work With
Over the years, my relationship with SHINING 3D has developed well beyond simply distributing and supporting their equipment.
A big part of these visits is sitting down directly with product managers, engineers, software developers and support teams to talk about what we are seeing in the real world.
What works well? What causes frustration? Which error message tells the user absolutely nothing useful? Which workflow takes six clicks when it should take two? What feature would actually save a clinic time rather than simply look good on a specification sheet?
These discussions are probably my favourite part of working in dental technology.
I get to bring problems and ideas from Australian clinics and laboratories directly to the people who can actually change the product.
Sometimes that means testing new hardware. Sometimes it is reproducing a strange software bug. Sometimes it is spending half an hour arguing about a button.
But those small improvements add up.
More Than Hardware and Software
Something else I particularly value about these visits is hearing from the clinical side.
Engineering can tell us whether something is accurate, repeatable and technically possible. That doesn't automatically mean it makes sense clinically.
I’m looking forward to catching up with SHINING 3D's clinical KOLs and hearing what they are seeing in practice: how clinicians are using the technology, where workflows succeed, where they fail and what problems still need solving.
That feedback loop between clinician, technician, engineer and software developer is where good dental technology comes from.
I like engineering, probably more than is healthy, but there is little value in building an incredibly accurate solution to the wrong problem.
From a 3 by 3 Stand to What SHINING 3D Is Today
One of the things that makes these visits particularly interesting for me is remembering where SHINING 3D's dental business started.
I remember seeing their early effort into intraoral scanning at IDS. SHINING 3D was known primarily for industrial scanning and metrology, and dental was represented by a tiny stand with the Aoralscan 2.
It was probably around 3 × 3 metres.
Compared with the scale of SHINING 3D Dental today, it is almost difficult to believe it was the same company.
SHINING 3D itself dates back to 2004 and built its foundations around high-precision 3D scanning, measurement, reverse engineering and industrial metrology. Today it employs more than 1,300 people and has operations across China, Europe, the United States and Japan.
Dental went from being a small extension of a metrology company to, from my perspective, becoming the dominant part of the business in almost every way — the products, software, people, exhibitions, development pace and sheer scale of the operation.
Yet importantly, they haven't abandoned where they came from.
Accuracy First
This is probably the thing I respect most about SHINING 3D. Their roots are still visible.
They came into dentistry from measurement.
That means conversations tend to come back to accuracy, repeatability, calibration, optical systems, algorithms and whether something can actually be measured reliably.
Rather than starting with dentistry and trying to work out how to build a scanner, they started with decades of experience in 3D vision and adapted that engineering knowledge to dentistry.
A great example is Aoralscan Elite. Instead of treating intraoral photogrammetry as a completely separate device and workflow, SHINING 3D combined structured-light intraoral scanning and photogrammetry in the same scanner. SHINING 3D describes the Elite as the first device to combine intraoral scanning and photogrammetry in a single unit.
That is exactly the kind of development I like seeing: taking technology grounded in measurement and adapting it to solve a genuine dental workflow problem.
Not adding another device to the bench. Removing one.
And Then There Is Hangzhou
Hangzhou itself makes the trip even better.
It is a fascinating combination of an old Chinese city and a serious modern technology centre.
It is home to West Lake, one of China's best-known cultural landscapes, surrounded by historic gardens, temples and the tea-growing hills responsible for West Lake Longjing tea.
At the same time, Hangzhou is home to some of China's biggest technology companies. Alibaba's principal operations and global headquarters are based in Hangzhou, so technology, software, AI and advanced manufacturing are a very visible part of the city.
That combination suits SHINING 3D remarkably well.
Precision engineering and AI, sitting alongside a city famous for a lake and tea that have been there for centuries.
What Comes Next?
SHINING 3D is a very different company from the one I first saw exhibiting dental equipment from that little IDS stand.
The scale has changed enormously.
The part I hope doesn't change is the willingness to sit around a table with engineers, argue about why something works the way it does, put a problem in front of R&D and ask: Can we make this better?
That is what I’ll be doing in Hangzhou.
Catching up with friends, learning from the clinical team, digging through whatever R&D is prepared to show me and working with one of my favourite teams to make some real improvements.
